A few weeks ago, while watching an episode of NBC’s Chuck, I found myself enjoying the intentionally eccentric rendition of Toto’s 1982 hit “Africa,” played by the in-show band Jeffster. I’d never cared for the song in the past, but after the episode was over, I nonetheless ended up on YouTube listening to it a few more times. In the comments for the “Trouble in Dreams” review yesterday, I mentioned that I find it interesting when I listen to the exact same song twice, yet have two completely different experiences. In the case of Destroyer, this effect is due to the music itself; however, I think that movies and tv shows can often cause the same change in perception of music (even when the quality of the music might be questionable).

In the Sopranos series finale last year, Journey’s 1981 hit “Don’t Stop Believin’” plays over the closing scene, as Tony and his family sit to eat at a diner. According the The Guardian, sales of this song increased by 482% in the three days following the finale. Similarly, when this song played during a 2003 episode of NBC’s Scrubs, overall retail sales of Journey’s “Greatest Hits” increased 51% for the following week (per Nielson SoundScan).

Taking a quick glance at my DVDs, I thought of two other scenes in movies that, I’d imagine, have produced similar results in album/song sales: “Tiny Dancer” (Elton John) from Almost Famous (2000), and “Stuck in the Middle With You” (Stealers Wheel) from Reservoir Dogs (1992). I had never much liked “Tiny Dancer” before Almost Famous, but now I’ll listen (and usually sing along) when I hear it playing. Similarly, when I was doing some research for my Adventureland review, I read more than a few critics who said that, while they had never been fans of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love,” they found themselves downloading the track after watching the film. This all seems to reinforce the notion that the context in which music (or more generally, art) is experienced can significantly change one’s perception of it, which I find to be very interesting.

Given the figures above, it surprises me there has not been much interaction between companies like Apple, Amazon, TiVo, Directv, etc. to get that soundtrack information to users at the source. Especially now that many television manufacturers are including web connectivity with their sets (and trying to bypass the set top box), I would think they could do well by allowing viewers to purchase music (on, say, their iTunes or Amazon accounts) directly from the television.

On Saturday I attended a three-hour IEEE guitar effects pedal building workshop here at the university. I paid $50, and was given a slew of parts (primary, around 10 resistors, 5 capacitors, a diode, a pcb, four potentiometers, an led, two audio cable jacks, a dc jack, four knobs, a pushbutton switch, and a metal case), then we worked for three hours in an Everitt Lab classroom at assembling the thing. A couple of months ago, I invested in a good quality set of equipment for working on such projects, and probably should have brought these to the workshop, because the given tools were less than ideal (obviously they weren’t going to buy everyone a $100+ soldering iron, as we were only paying for the parts). This and the fact that we were working in a crowded classroom with tiny, angled desks meant that I only got about half of the thing soldered and wired up in the three hours of the workshop. Later, I finished the remaining half in under an hour back at home.

Despite this, I’m really pleased with the result. I’ve owned around a dozen effects pedals throughout the past eight years (since I’ve been playing guitar), and this one has one of the nicest — if not the nicest — sounds, and feels very sturdy. The latter is great, as I’ve smashed about half of my old, plastic-case pedals. As for the former, the guys running the workshop claimed to have tested this pedal against the $120 Electro-Harmonix Metal Muff, and said that theirs easily sounds better. I’m not a big fan of the metal sound (and I’ve never used the Metal Muff), but playing around with the pedal earlier today, I was able to get a crisp distortion to it that I think will fit nicely with the kind of stuff that I do like to play. Finally, I named the pedal “THE CRUSHN8R,” after the robot from Futurama of the same name (”A woman that fine needs to be romanced.”), and in reference to the “crushing” distortion sound of the pedal itself. If I find some time later, I’ll post a sound clip of the pedal in action.